History, people, fables and critical essays on the 24/7 life of the French Quarter. "Those who live somewhere should be allowed to decide how a place should exist; it should not be determined by how it can be sold."

Study: Corps decisions doomed canal walls in Katrina

What is evident from the project record is that the Army Corps of Engineers recommended raising the canal floodwalls for the 17th Street Canal, but recommended gated structures at the mouths of the Orleans and London Avenue canals because the latter plan was less expensive.”

A corps spokesman didn’t comment specifically on the report, but said the agency gained valuable knowledge from such studies that it has used in rebuilding the levee system after Katrina.

“The Army Corps is first and foremost a learning organization,” said spokesman Ricky Boyett. “Our focus over the last ten years has been to learn from all the lessons of Hurricane Katrina.”

He noted that New Orleans’ revamped levee system protects much of the area from a so-called 100-year storm, or one with a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year, and it’s also designed to resist erosion during stronger storms. “As a result of this effort and the efforts of all of our partners, the greater New Orleans area now has the best level of risk reduction in its history,” Boyett said.

Dear potential contributors, eyes-on-the-street and well-wishers:

Here are the questions that sparked this FQ project:

Who uses the Quarter to work, to live, to meet, to drink/eat, to shop, to protest?
Do enough people love it and care for it?
What do we need to do to keep it from atrophying into complete caricature and what hard truths and practices do we need to consider to restore its diversity?

If you have an opinion, I'd like to hear about it. This project will tell details of all kinds, of every single block in the Quarter and of New Orleans. Reviews, interviews, essays, stories, criticism. And links to those places and written histories that need to be remembered-leaving the obvious to the postcards-to dig up some old underused ideas and add some new innovations to our city center. Blog pieces, zines, broadsheets, articles, maps and other forms will be used in this project.

Dar

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Mercantile Jackson Square Project 1850-

I am beginning research on the commercial history of Jackson Square since the addition of the Pontalba Bldgs. Feel free to contact me if you have primary documents, ephemera or first-hand accounts of Jackson Square retail, apartment dwelling or other commercial aspects pre 1950s. The latter years and the entire history of the artists colony will be tackled later.

Why we should study the French Quarter:

“Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance — not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any once place is always replete with new improvisations.”
Jane Jacobs